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Walking Dead Words, Stupid Simile Shuffle, and Stellar Simile Smack Down


 I have been having a blast with my creative writing students. This semester I am trying some activities I did not do with my last semester kiddos.  First, we had a Stupid Simile Shuffle. We discussed cliches, connotation of words, and what makes a good simile.  For example, I asked, "Why does it work to say that her teeth were as yellow as corn but not that her lovely dress was as yellow as corn?" Then,  I found a list of horrible similes taken from student writing and cut them into small strips.   There were definitely some doozies. Students had to mill about the room reading their stupid simile to a partner and each partner and to explain why the simile was stupid and didn't work!  Here is a link to the ones I used.  Seldom do I use examples of bad writing to share with my students when teaching them how to write, but I couldn't resist sharing these, and it was evident by their laughter that they enjoyed hearing them. 

 Afterwards, students returned to their seats to write their own similes. I gave them some examples of GOOD ones from a book I am reading called Tortilla Curtain.  Finally, students went outside to publish their own in the quad using sidewalk chalk. We called this our Ste Stellar Simile Smackdown!











Today I taught a lesson that I called Walking Dead Words. I gave students a list of dead words, and we discussed more powerful word choices.  I had prepared  34 index cards, each with a sentence containing a dead word on the front.  I used four different colors to write the sentences.  I had four red cards, four blue cards, four green cards...you get the idea.  I spread the cards all around the room.  Students had to walk around, pick up a card, and rewrite the sentence on the back using a stronger word.  By the time we were finished, there were five sentences on the back of each card. I encouraged students to use a thesaurus.  At the end, I asked students to pick up the index card closest to them.  Remember the colors?  They had to find the people with the same color card and form a group with those people. They had to choose the BEST sentence from each of their cards and publish it to a Padlet.  Students rated one another's sentences.  I don't think these lesson ideas are particularly amazing, but I do love that students were able to get out of their seats, move around, and interact with one another! Lots of love, learning, and laughter!
Our Padlet




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